Camp QUILTBAG


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 To every reader who has been looking for their place: Camp QUILTBAG has a spot for you.
 
 
 
 
 1
 Abigail
 (She/Her/Hers)
 Abigail found the website herself.
 It was a very un-Abigail-like thing to do. She’d had a bad day at school (weren’t they all bad days ever since Stacy had stopped being her friend?) and came home, traded her school uniform skirt for sweatpants, and did what she always did on bad days: took out her laptop to watch interviews of her celebrity favorites on YouTube.
 Mostly Laura Dern. Or Teri Polo. Or some other older actress, usually at least over forty, who was pretty enough to steal Abigail’s heart that week. She sort of had a thing for older ladies. It sort of got her into all this trouble in the first place.
 She couldn’t enjoy the YouTube interviews that day, though. She tried. She pulled up an old Jurassic Park interview, and Laura Dern said something silly, and Abigail blushed at the sound of her laughter, and she’d had such a bad day at school that even just blushing in the privacy of her bedroom was, well, embarrassing.
 Really embarrassing. Abigail couldn’t explain it, but she felt the tips of her ears get warm, and her shoulders tensed and inched up her neck, and she couldn’t enjoy Laura Dern anymore. Not when all the kids at school had been making fun of her for weeks for having stupidly admitted to having a crush on Stacy’s mom.
 Nice job, Abigail. No one needed to know about that.
 But now they all did know. Stacy had stopped inviting Abigail to hang out because she said it was now super weird, and honestly, Abigail didn’t blame her. It was super weird.
 It was even weirder when Abigail realized that she not only missed hanging out with Stacy, she also missed seeing Stacy’s mom.
 You’re hopeless, Abigail. And now you have no friends.
 It was kind of a double-edged sword that summer break was nearly here. Because, Yay, no more school where she could have bad days! But also, Oh no, no friends to make summer plans with. Stacy and the other girls would all go to the beach and the boardwalk without inviting her, and they would post pictures all over social media, and Abigail would not be in a single shot.
 That was what Abigail was thinking about when she closed YouTube and pulled up Google and typed, How do I find LGBTQ friends?
 That, too, felt kind of embarrassing. Who used Google to find friends? Abigail was definitely hopeless, was definitely alone, and definitely had no real people skills whatsoever.
 She was seriously considering asking her mom to send her to a convent or something to escape being such an awkward excuse of a human in such a cruel, cruel world, when she saw it (on the third O page of the Goooooogle results): Camp QUILTBAG.
 She clicked the link.
 Camp QUILTBAG, according to its website, was a two-week camp for LGBTQ+ youth in Minnesota—which was delightfully far, far away from Abigail’s friends (ex-friends?) in New Jersey. The very top of the page had a quote from a former camper that said, “Camp QUILTBAG felt like more than just a summer camp, it felt like coming home.” There were pictures of kids in rainbow-colored shirts, smiling, arms around each other. The descriptions said it had activities just like any other camp—obstacle courses, swimming, kayaking, archery—and ones specifically for LGBTQ+ kids—workshops on gender identity and expression, body image and self-esteem, LGBTQ+ history, and drag makeup.
 It sounded terrifying. Abigail was just . . . Abigail, and the kids in these pictures were all smiles and dyed hair and cool colorful clothes. The kids in these pictures looked totally out, and totally proud, and probably never got embarrassed.
 But it also sounded perfect because those kids probably never got embarrassed and probably were totally out and proud, and maybe Abigail could somehow learn to be, too. Maybe they’d understand her crush on Stacy’s mom and Laura Dern and Teri Polo and all the other beautiful women in the world.
 So she clicked the More Information link and filled out her mom’s email address, and then hit send before she could stop herself. 
 She had a minor panic attack and major regret immediately afterwards. It wasn’t that her parents didn’t know, but there was knowing, and there was knowing. There was a difference between Oh, Abigail has crushes on actresses and Abigail wants to go to gay camp.
 Not to mention the fact that she wouldn’t exactly be able to tell a single soul at school she’d be spending her summer at gay camp, of all things.
 Though, in fairness, it wasn’t like she had anyone to tell right now, anyway.
 But it wasn’t like she could take it back now, either. She sped out of her room and down the stairs to where her mom was sitting in the living room, but all she could do was stand there, eyes wide, watching it all unfold, like realizing the Jell-O was wiggling and knowing a T. rex was about to show up but really, how well could you run from it now?
 Abigail’s mom was basically glued to her cell phone, and Abigail had the pleasure of making it to the room just in time to hear it buzz with the notification of an incoming email. Abigail pressed her lips tightly together, holding her breath.
 “Is this something you’re interested in?” her mom asked.
 “No. Maybe. Yes,” Abigail replied.
 “It’s over two thousand dollars to attend,” her mom responded.
 Which was a lot of money. Abigail knew that from how intensely she’d studied the website in the first place. But her mom and dad paid for Catholic school every year because they wanted Abigail to have a foundation in faith, or whatever. If they could spend the